Justice
BBC One
As far as BBC box-ticking goes, Justice is something of a masterwork. This is a new daytime drama in which a judge inhabits the dirty corners of Liverpool, trying to topple those who think that they are untouchable through his innovative Public Justice Centre. The Beeb getting way out of London: tick. Making a programme that feels more working class: tick, with extra merit points for venturing into underclasses. Educating and informing about social issues: double tick. Not only did storylines bubble in and out of yesterday’s opener about youth crime, prostitution and gone-to-pot communities, all issues that will ripen as its five-day run continues — but there’s also a companion-piece documentary about community policing, Neighbourhood Blues, running each morning.
So much for the box-ticking — did Justice work as a drama? Well, if it did, this was largely down to the enigmatic figure at its centre. Judge Coburn, played with just the right amount of ennui by Robert Pugh, was an odd, compelling little man. Indistinguishable at the start from a defendant, as he stood by the centre’s fence looking scruffy and smoking a roll-up, it was apparent by the end that he was really something different. “My job is to apply the law imaginatively and compassionately,” he said, before doing exactly that. Imaginatively, he went rather Red Hand Gang, stealing a BMX bike from a local bad lad and riding it around the wasteland until he found the young scamp who had broken into his office. Compassionately, because the young scamp became something of a protegé within minutes, of course, helping the old guy not only with his job but also with his aches and pains.
Advertisement
But here’s where we go back to an awful lot of boxes. Because the problem was that the drama seemed to want to do far too much with its main character. Many sections were played strongly for laughs — not least the Clint Eastwood moment when Coburn hijacks the BMX boys, that famous western refrain ringing out. There were elements of soap as members of Coburn’s team seemed to be shafting each other, in the workplace and the bedroom. A tone of thriller followed as everyone — colleagues, media and men in the grotty pub — speculated about the judge’s murky past. “Can you imagine leaving town as a criminal and coming back as a judge?”, contemplated the hotshot journo (Gillian Kearney), who you can sense may be more than his sparring partner by the end of the week. That’s not even to mention a bit of religion, a bit of philosophy and a sub-plot about care-home kids that hasn’t even woven into the main action yet. As we skipped from one thing to the next at quite a pace, twinkly music underlining every punchline, it was no wonder that Coburn had a bad back by the end.
Clever and witty, no doubt, but also a little disorienting, unfortunately. Still, with cuts being touted that would make BBC One the Beeb’s only outlet for daytime programming, far better for it to have too much ambition than too little.